Originally posted April 7, 2009
This aftemoon we had potentially the most creative shoplifter in the store.
He’s come in before, and what he does is pick up some snacks and drinks when he comes in, grabs a magazine, and sits in our waiting area. If you go up and ask him if he’s waiting for a prescription, he’ll very politely inform you that he’s waiting for his wife. He first came in about 2 weeks ago pulled this shit. Later we discovered that he didn’t pay for what he was eating. This is us in the pharmacy figured he’d paid up front. The front thought he’d gotten some meds and paid for the snacks at the same time.
He came in today and did the same thing. As luck would have it, we had an electrician in the store who kept screwing up the power to the pharmacy’s registers. When I went up front to ring someone out, I let them know he was back there, eating and “waiting” for his wife again.
So someone from the front store went back to the pharmacy and told him he had to pay for it, at which point he takes his Slim Jims and half eaten candy bar and gets all shifty and comes up to the front registers where me and Supertech are helping the pharmacy people who couldn’t get rung out in the back. He tries to act all slick and friendly and asks “What, you’re up up here waiting for me?” One of the supervisors comes from the back and hands him his half-filled soda bottle and tells him he has to pay for that too, because he’d “forgotten” it at the pharmacy.
And lo and behold, suddenly now he’s waiting in the store for his wife, who’s no longer in the store but is waiting for him outside, with all his money. Obviously she’d left him there, right? He’s told that in general, when you go to a store, you don’t eat the food first and then pay, that’s just not how you do things, etc. He keeps explaining that he’ll be right back, he’s got to go get his money.
Naturally, no one can touch him as he leaves; no corporation wants to get sued by a shoplifter injured when restrained. He walks out the doors, stands in the middle of the parking lot, and proceeds to look around as though he’s completely baffled about the whereabouts of his wife. Finally, he kind of shrugs and shakes his head, like he’s trying to convince us he’s out there thinking “welp, she left me again”. He walks away, probably to go pull this on another store.
And of course, this is the one time we don’t have a cop sitting in the lot, staring at the porn shop across the street.
